I've played the game about 5-6 times now and I feel that it can be pretty hard to catch the leader. I define leader in the mid-game to be one who has a stockpile of cash. No games have been won by someone without a big stack of coin going into final scoring.

In this most recent game it was the Nordic Kingdoms paired with the Agriculture board (I think)/the one that gives 3 coins for enlisting. That's essentially 12 points just from that for something that wasn't hard for him to do. Thus he got a small stock of cash early and it felt like there was nothing the 3 of us could do to really stop him. He had 86 points at the end while 2nd was in the mid-60s

Increasing your popularity and/or grabbing territory can easily overcome this. Four territories while even at the lowest popularity is equal to those 12 coins. To take that enlist action he had to produce numerous times to get the resources to pay for it, it is far from free.

Also, the way the scoring works, the winner may often have a decent points lead - especially if they end the game by placing their sixth star or taking a move action. So 20 points is not unusual.

For reference, if I take the factory from you and place a combat star to win, the relative change in our scores will range between 15 and 29 depending on popularity - That is a huge jump that can happen in one turn, and isn't accounting for the bottom row action!

So a player being one or two moves more efficient during the game may have a score lead that is large compared to the actual difference between players in game position.

All this to say I don't necessarily think those scores indicate a huge discrepancy in game state.

Today when I played vs the Automa if I'd had two more turns I could have gained about 40 points more. I would have placed my last building, giving a star and extra points for the bonus card. And done a move action, which would take over the factory plus have mechs dropping off workers while they moved to new territories. So 7 new territories in one move (factory counting as 3).

Using a few turns early on to grab some coins can set you back in building an engine and be very costly come scoring time.

Yeah, to back up what the Reverend said, in a game I played last night, I had a bigger stockpile of cash than the winner did. But she won by a landslide as she was able to, on her last turn, get control of 14 hexes and increase her popularity to the next level. That blew her past all of us!

She put out all 8 or her workers plus three Mechs, plus two structures, plus her character = 14. And all in different hexes by her last turn. Admittedly, my alarm bells didn't go off till it was too late, as my thick-headed skull was too busy focusing on my own strategy! I knew something was amiss when I noticed the way she was using all the tunnels! But I sort of let my attention fall off at that point, especially when I saw that her popularity was so low, due to paying for her last few workers. But she got it back up again.

I could've/should've done something to start moving into at least a few of her hexes with her workers, to send them back home. But I was too "Chicken $h!+" to lose my popularity to do so! And sure, there are a few other things I, and the other two players could've done to stop her. (And who says this game doesn't require interaction)!

At about the 5-6 play point I was seeing the winner dominating also. Usually they had a stack of coins and a good engine going. I think what was happening is we were figuring out the Euro part of the strategy: how to build an engine. We hadn't yet figured out the Amerithrash aspect, i.e., how to throw a monkey wrench into your opponent's plans.

Since then, I've seen how to mess with the other players while still keeping my economy building. The last couple of games we actually had very little cash.

Yeah, to back up what the Reverend said, in a game I played last night, I had a bigger stockpile of cash than the winner did. But she won by a landslide as she was able to, on her last turn, get control of 14 hexes and increase her popularity to the next level. That blew her past all of us!

She put out all 8 or her workers plus three Mechs, plus two structures, plus her character = 14. And all in different hexes by her last turn. Admittedly, my alarm bells didn't go off till it was too late, as my thick-headed skull was too busy focusing on my own strategy! I knew something was amiss when I noticed the way she was using all the tunnels! But I sort of let my attention fall off at that point, especially when I saw that her popularity was so low, due to paying for her last few workers. But she got it back up again.

I could've/should've done something to start moving into at least a few of her hexes with her workers, to send them back home. But I was too "Chicken $h!+" to lose my popularity to do so! And sure, there are a few other things I, and the other two players could've done to stop her. (And who says this game doesn't require interaction)!

Nice one, Barry!

Yes, this game is far from a multi-player solitaire as some originally called it. It's important to watch your opponents build up and actions and react when necessary!

You can take my game… when you pry my cold, dead fingers off the board!

Only played twice and Nordic happened to win with a strong lead in each (90pts vs 60ish, both 4 player games).

I'm finding it really hard to have any idea how well other players are doing... or myself in comparison for that matter. I haven't really focused on that though, mostly just "did my own thing". Now that we got the basics down, I think that will be the challenge going forward. I guess we just have to pay more attention to other's positions and maybe do some rough score-calculating mid-way into the game.

In most cases, the majority of your end-game points are going to come from territories and stars, each of which is modified by your popularity. So who is "in the lead" at any single point in time can be estimated by computing the number of coins each player is currently getting from those two sources. (Remember that it is an approximation, and if one person has, for example, a pile of $ in front of them, that will obviously weigh in on the results. Resources are a lot more fluid of a point source, so unless someone is sitting on piles and piles of them, I wouldn't worry about it. And if they are, someone's probably maneuvering to try to take them away from the player anyway. )

The thing about Scythe is that, depending on the efficiency of a player's engine, that positioning can change relatively quickly. Game-ending three-star turns are not uncommon, and even six-star turns are not unheard of (although they take some careful maneuvering, and probably some sub-optimal play on the part of the opponents). So you can get a pretty good approximation of who the major players are at any given point in time, but judging how that will change over even the next turn or two requires a lot more careful observation.